Estimate Of Number Left Homeless By Typhoon Soars

Patients injured during Typhoon Haiyan lie in the halls of the Divine Word Hospital in Tacloban, the Philippines. Despite severe damage to the ground floor and the loss of the roof, the staff of the hospital keep treating patients.

A Filipino boy climbs up a pile of wreckage outside the devastated Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center in Tacloban on Saturday.

David Gilkey
/ NPR

Originally published on November 16, 2013 4:05 pm

Update at 4:55 p.m. ET. Estimate Of Those Displaced Soars:

It's now estimated by the U.N. that 1.9 million people in the Philippines were forced from their homes by Typhoon Haiyan when it roared through on Nov. 8, NPR's Jason Beaubien reported Saturday on All Things Considered.

That's a dramatic increase from the earlier estimate of 900,000. Jason said officials raised the figure after reaching more of the stricken villages, towns and cities.

Meanwhile, Jason said that while things are getting better in the hard-hit city of Tacloban, "there's a long way to go."

He described some of the problems there, and one hospital's story of determination, earlier in the day.

But stories of survival and strength also continue to emerge. On Weekend Edition, NPR's Jason Beaubien reported about the hospitals and medical facilities that suffered catastrophic damage.

In the Divine Word Hospital he visited in the city of Tacloban, the lobby has been turned into a makeshift triage ward.

"The crowd of patients waiting to be seen spills out into the parking lot," Jason said. And though there's no electricity, "nurses are tending to wounds and taking the vital signs of patients on a line of gurneys in front of what used to be the pharmacy."

The typhoon "ripped the roof off this solid four-story hospital and threw it down in the courtyard," Jason added. "Air conditioning units in the upper floor windows were flung into the rooms. Windows were smashed. Nurses continue to mop the mud out of wards on the ground floor."

A patient, Ronico Olarte, tells of trying to hold up the cement walls of his home — only to see one collapse onto him. One of his legs was crushed. "He was originally treated at the regional government hospital," Jason said, "but when the doctors decided they couldn't save his leg, he was sent here for the amputation."

A nurse, Sister Eliza Arpon, says the staff is "just so thankful ... despite of all this ... you go on, you can survive."

NPR photographer David Gilkey is also in Tacloban. We've added a photo he took inside the hospital that Jason visited, as well as two others — one of the destruction at another hospital and another showing the some of the mass of wreckage in Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people.

Related Content

A little over a week ago, Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines, leaving thousands dead and devastating the city of Tacloban. Suzette Grillot also talks with Joshua Landis about a so-called "wild card" in Syria's civil war - private funding by wealthy donors.

Thousands have died, and millions more have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan’s landfall in the Philippines earlier this month, and significant aid has poured in from the United States, Australia and Japan.

(We updated this post at 10:40 a.m. ET to include the latest official death toll of more than 2,300.)

As some trucks loaded with food and other aid arrive in the Philippine city of Tacloban, they're being looted by residents struggling to survive in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, NPR's Anthony Kuhn said Wednesday on Morning Edition.